Surface
by SkinnyJeansAndAnorexia
Summary: AU/Modern World. Katara became depressed at the age of 8 after her and her mother got into a car accident and only she survived. Living with her barely there father and obnoxious brother and the only person who loves her is miles away, she now battles a hidden eating disorder and it gets harder, day by day to hide from her family and friends. Will she finally crash?


**Summary:** AU/Modern World. (Katara's family is rich.)Katara became depressed at the age of 8 after her and her mother got into a car accident and only she survived. She now battles a hidden eating disorder and it gets harder, day by day to hide from her family and she finally crash?

Katara is 14 turning 15. Sokka and Suki are 17. Aang and Toph are 12. Zuko is 15 and Azula is 14.

**Chapter One:** Katara

"To lose confidence in one's body is to lose confidence in oneself."

Simone de Beauvoir

Katara poured too much milk in her glass and everything spills over.

Her mind is blank but when the wetness of the liquid drops on her foot and slides down through her flats, she is awaken.

Katara looks at the mess she's made and quickly grab a rag to clean up her mess and her shoes.

For the past 2 days she's been going in and out of a daze. Her mind lifts up from its usual sitting and wonders to Wonderland while her body, however, stays put.

She look at this as her lack of eating but it's no way she would let food pass her lips. She hasn't for a whole week, so she won't start now. She gets the mess cleaned up in time before she hears heavy stomps descending down the stairs, making their way to the kitchen.

"Hey, Katara," her older brother Sokka says. He sits at the small island in front of her and pours himself a huge bowl of cereal. Definitely not the serving size and starts to shovel it into his mouth.

"Ugh, you are so gross. Are we even related?" Katara ask after picking up her too full glass of milk and dumping it into the sink.

"Nope, you're adopted remember? We found you in a dumpster with a family of dying raccoons." He says through a mouth full of Lucky Charms.

"Shut up, can you hurry? We're going to be late for school. I have a test in English today."

Sokka picks up his bowl and tilts it back before bringing it over to the sink. He holds up a finger and Katara just stares at him, then he opens his mouth and lets out the loudest burp he could muster.

Katara's mouth opened in horror as she began to yell at him," Sokka! You're so gross! You just got all your boy germs on me. Ugh, I hate you!"

"People who hate me don't get rides in my car." Sokka sung. "Come on before we're late!"

"I seriously don't know how Suki stands you; you're like a human vacuum!"

* * *

The ride to school was irksome as Sokka kept on blasting his music with the windows down, disturbing not only me but neighbors when we rode by. We get to school in one piece though, no thanks to Sokka's driving.

I get out of his black Ferrari and head towards the school building. Its 7:58, I can hide out in homeroom until breakfast is over by 8:10. I wave a quick bye to Sokka before walking straight to Mr. Gee Sun class and sit at the desk, front and center.

"Good morning, Katara." Mr. Gee Sun greets.

"Great morning, Mr. G. I'm all ready for that test!" Katara beamed, smiling too hard.

"Good! If you don't mind I have to step out for a bit, don't do anything crazy while I'm gone." Mr. Gee Sun smiled before waving out the room. Katara let out a sigh before flipping through her binding, getting out her English notes to study before the test. Her stomach grumbled for protest for food.

She ignored it, however, shouting louder in her head the vocabulary and how use proper sentence structures. She pulls out two pencils and puts everything away, the growling in her stomach becoming unbearable. She hates this part of not eating. She takes another deep breathing before rising slowly to sharpen her pencils.

Katara pulls of her phone and taps the screen to reveal the time: 8:08.

Mr. G slides back into the room as swiftly as her left out. She stays put and waits for the rest of her classmates to file into the room. When everyone settles down and take a seat, Mr. G hands out the papers for this weeks test. Katara does a once over and flashes a quick smile and starts filling it out.

Some people call her a nerd, or Miss-Know-It-All. She calls herself smart and well-prepared. Her grades are the only thing about her she takes pride in. As long as she can keep her grades up she can be happy. She can control something out of her dull, useless life.

She starting becoming sad at age 8. She started being severely depressed at age 11. When her body was going through changes and her dad and brothers couldn't relate and her grandmother was thousands of miles away. She started to miss her mother all over again, started to relive the car crash all over again. So at age twelve she learned to stop eating due to her overwhelming sadness.

At age thirteen she finally learned how not eating could result in weight loss and boys noticed you more when you had a flatter stomach and boobs and she was just plain fat before. She learned if she couldn't control her sadness and loneliness she could control her weight.

That's how it's been for almost a year now.

And since age thirteen she dropped from her healthy 108, to a striking 92. She loved it though, no matter how much she wanted to eat or how bad her headaches got, she loved it.

Katara eyes flicked at the wall clock facing her in the classroom and it read 8:15. She finished the test in five minutes and has to wait an extra 15 before all her classmates catch up. She rises from her seat (very slowly) and walks up to her teacher's desk before placing the test on it.

She turns and walks back to her seat as quietly as she can. She rest her head on her folded arms and waits for time to be called. Her eyes drift close and she tries her hardest not to fall asleep. Her body doesn't listens anyways and before she realizes she is drifting into a dream.

In her dreams, Katara like to think she is a princess. She likes to think she sits high on her throne and everyone else bows down to her. She like to think that she is already her Ultimate Goal Weight (75lbs). She likes to think her dad doesn't take continuous business trips and her brother isn't such a slob. She dreams her mother sit by her side because she has always been the Queen.

Then she gets shaken awake by Umiai, a girl in her class with short silky brown hair and darkened blue eyes.

Katara whispers a silent 'thanks' before sitting up right and listening in to her teachers assignments for the day.

* * *

Katara breezes by her classes , (Health, AP Algebra, AP Biology) and sits alone on the usual spot at lunch. She usually arrives first and hangs out with Sokka and and his girlfriend Suki and their friends. At first Sokka used to object but when his girlfriend saw the poor freshman didn't have anyone to sit with, he invited Katara to hang with them. Now a sophomore and being the youngest in her class (she was still 14 while everyone else was turning 15). She really didn't find a interest in them and decided hanging with Seniors this year wouldn't do any harm.

Sokka keeps reminding her next year he won't be here (hopefully) and neither will Suki in a couple months so she needed to become more "sociable" and gain friends of her own, but she just couldn't. Half the boys in her class were going through puberty and most of the girls were snobs or didn't want to be bothered or were too perfect to be friends with_ he_r.

Plus her boobs were smaller than everyone elses, and she was so awkward around new people.

Suki breaks her out of her deep thoughts when she plops down in front of her. The rounding table suddenly feels a lot smaller.

"Hey, 'Tara." Suki greets with a small smile. Her perfect teeth shining past her perfect pink lips. Katara smiles back, automatically and waves a small hand.

Suki has her auburn hair pulled back from her fresh face. Her blue-grey eyes shine whenever she looks up. She wears a grey 'V' neck top with black jeans. She's pretty thin but healthy. If Katara every wishes for a healthy body, it would be Suki's.

"Hey, Suki. What's up? It's like I haven't seen you in years!" Katara says.

"Sorry, I was away with the parentals checking out colleges. I wanted Sokka to come along but I didn't want you to be alone for a week." Suki says, her eyebrows knitted in weariness.

"Oh, I would have been fine. I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself," she giggles to make the statement friendly.

Before Suki can reply she gets embraced by skinny (but muscular) arms and a head the dips down to give her a big, wet kiss.

Katara rolls her eyes, she wishes Sokka wouldn't do that, it grossed her out. Suki, lightly pushes him away and her grabs a chair and sit down next to her. A few moments later they are joined by more people, four boys (mostly Sokka's friends (mostly Sokka's_ ho_t friends!) and two other girls, known as Lin and Mika.

One of Sokka's friend, Jet, was one of the tallest. He had soft brown hair and had the slickest smile Katara has ever seen. He always looked at her from the corner of his eye and winked at her, discreetly. She would shyly smile at that point looking at her hands and picking at her nail polish.

The only times she gets to talk to Jet is at lunch or when he comes over to play video games with Sokka. They never talk anything about the looks they give each other, but about school and their favorite things to do. But, oh, she'd love to have a conversation with just them two. But he was an older boy and older boys caused trouble.

When everyone leaves to get lunch Katara rises with them, and stands in the Deli line. She gets a simple Tuna sandwich and water and heads to her seat. She is usually the first one to sit down so she has a chance to pick apart her food and make it look like she's eating.

She breaks the sandwich in half then breaks the halves in half. Her stomach growls and grabs one of the pieces off, separating the tuna from the bread. She does the same with another half and wraps the bread into a napkin tightly before shoving it into her pocket.

She spreads the tuna around on her small plate and makes it look spacey so it seems like she's eaten. A few moments later she gets joined by Suki who has a pizza on her plate.

Suki holds the grease-filled, fat with her two hands and places a bite into her mouth. Katara feels her stomach churn and she thinks if she had food in her stomach right now, she'd throw up.

"You okay?" another voice ask, this time deep and familiar. She looks up to meet Jet's gray eyes.

"Oh, yeah. I'm fine. Just not very hungry." Katara gives a small smile before looking down at her food. She grabs her bottle of water and takes small sips from it.

She feels her stomach churn again and can feel nausea rising in her throat, swirling around the contents of her empty stomach. She rises slowly," I'll be right back."

She picks up her tray and dumps it on her way out of the cafeteria. She rushes to the closest bathroom and falls into a stall and bends her body over the toilet.

A yellow-sickly color crawls up her throat and deposits itself in the water before her. Her heads starts to pound and she thinks maybe she should have eaten a little something today. But it's ok because she isn't passed out cold on the floor by this time and she has seen blood yet.

Her body is getting better. She pulls herself from the stall to the sink to rinse out her mouth. When she travels down the hall she stops by the water fountain taking large swallows of water before heading to her last two classes of the day.

* * *

The end of the school day passes by in a blur to Katara. She meets her brother and his group of friends by his car. They laugh loudly about something and gives each other high fives. Katara blinks once when she spots Jet and places a smile on her face.

"Man, she was asking for it! And kept pushing it, pushing it-" Aito, another senior boy Sokka hangs with. He had long black hair that sat on his shoulders and he was taller than Sokka by at least three inches.

"Ok, chill. My sisters here. She's only 14." Sokka laughed along with him. Katara felt irritated inside. He was always trying to protect her from everything. Like she didn't already know where babies came from or what him and Suki do in his room when she isn't there.

Ew.

"Oh, yeah. Baby Ikari," Aito says calling her by her last name, while ruffling her hair on her head.

"Hey," She smiles weakly before faltering. She turns to Sokka and says," We have to get home."

"Why? I'm talking to my friends," Sokka points out to the four other guys around them.

"It's Friday, Sokka. We have to go pack to go to GranGran's house for the weekend." Katara says, big blue eyes stretching. Their was a pause in the world before all of Sokka's friends burst out laughing.

They threw their heads back and slapped their knees, but Katara didn't find anything funny. She looked at Sokka and saw him blushing before he signals her to get in the car. She followed as he said, sliding in the front seat and tossing her bag in the back. She waits another few minutes for Sokka to say bye to the guys and flings open the door.

"About time, now lets hurry!"

"Katara! Don't you know embarrassing that was? saying I go to my grandmother's house?"

"It's embarrassing but it's true! Plus, what wrong with GranGran. They all love her and her cooking!"

"Nevermind, let me get you home. I'm not going to GranGran's this weekend. I'll drop you home, get your stuff and I'll drive you up."

Katara sighs, "Whatever."


End file.
